Applying the political modernization concept for the research of the processes going on in contemporary Russia, the author (President, «Strategy» Centre of Humane and Political Studies, St. Petersburg) diagnoses the present condition of Russia’s transit as the still lasting, and not so much advanced as, rather, delayed phase of democracy establishment. And since the problem of democracy consolidation, for that matter, is related by him first of all to the degree and character of the development of civil society, he turns to the concrete analysis of civil society in Russia. The article, with resort to significant examples, brings into comparison both the structure and the functioning of civil society in Russia, on the one hand, and in consolidated democracies, on the other. In the course of the analysis and of the comparison, the author «locates» that very link in the structure of civil society (the link is constituted by «mediator-organizations»), to the sufficient development of which the eventual attainment, by a society, of the democracy consolidation phase is necessarily related.